10.07.13

Summary: A few remarks regarding so-called “successful” (rich) countries and what can be said about the source of affluence (if any, i.e. if not made up or stolen but derived from natural resources like oil)

The Swiss authorities are said to be cracking down on (or at least trying to put an end to) the large-scale financial fraud that many of us call “success” when in fact it’s gaming and manipulation, or in other words systematic looting [1]. At the same time, Switzerland considers introducing the concept of basic income [2,3] as a reality in this high-GDP country (one of the wealthiest in the world, as measured per capita). Europe is trying to mimic US success when it comes to startups [4], but it must realise that careless lending is what made a lot of US corporations grow and even sustain themselves as giants, operating at a loss or running on government subsidies (taxpayers’ money and/or collective/national debt). What we have right now is a massive US debt economy with pretense of recovery [5], corporate deregulation masquerading as “liberalism” [6], and sheer poverty that’s the side-effect of huge economic disparity, leading to sheer desperation for the masses [7]. If a nation seeks to enjoy long-term dominance without constant wars (some countries would rather start a war every once in a few years to send a warning sign regarding conformity and obedience) and without running massive deficits (e.g. subsidising massive corporations that engage in large-scale surveillance and imperialism), then a model nation would be hard to find. Switzerland thrives in financial crimes; it harbours many rich people’s savings in what’s essentially tax havens. Just ask Elmer. In that sense, Switzerland enjoys great wealth for complicity in crimes. Whether it shares the loot with all the citizens in the form of basic wage (like Dubai does by incentivising citizens to stay atop the oil) does not matter. Whether it pretends (to save face) that it is cracking down on the financial crimes that many of its bankers engage in may not matter either. What matters is not a country’s total wealth but the value of its morality. Sadly, by the standards many tend to embrace, all that counts is the “bottom line”, which by convention means money. █

Some 120,000 Swiss signatories have put their names to a petition demanding a monthly minimum wage of $2,800 (2,500 Swiss francs) for every single member of the working adult population. Enough names have been collected for a government vote.

Anything less than the proposed amount would be deemed illegal, even for people working in the lowest paid jobs. A typical fast-food worker in the US earns roughly $1,500 per month.

From President Obama on down, defenders of the status quo insist that the US economy has “recovered” or “is recovering”. Some actually see the world that way. They inhabit, imagine they inhabit, or plan to soon inhabit the world of the infamous top 1%. Others simply seek security in life by loyally repeating whatever that 1% is saying.

One of the oldest rhetorical tricks of free-marketeers has been the appeal to unintended consequences; state interventions, they claim – often reasonably – don’t work out as intended. But it’s not just statist policies that are vulnerable to unintended consequences. So too is neoliberalism, as Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday made clear.

The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again